USS Enterprise D Galaxy Class WIP (Internal Turrets)

[alterintel]

Update 09SEP15: It's got working 10 working Phasors turrets (Total size each=9000 blocks Beam,Cannon 75% ,Overdrive 100%) They pack quite a punch when they don't miss. I'm working on Cannon,Cannon,Overdrive now to improve hit rate.

*********************************End Update**************************************

Original Post:
This is still very much a work in progress, but now I believe some of the hardest parts are done. I finally figured it out.

So I took it upon myself to take on my next favorite space ship. The one I grew up with the Federation Galaxy Class Starship. This is the third in series of ships I plan on recreating in Starmade. The first was the Defiant, and the second was the Serenity.

I've finally figured out the hardest part of this project.... The phasor banks. With the way that Starmade is setup, it is next to impossible to create effective large ships without turrets. I was racking my head for ideas, about how I could make the saucer section open up and a turret could come out or something like that. I even posted a new thread in suggestions for a weapon emitter block. It was then that GaeasSon suggested internal turrets that he had used on his Constitution Class.

A Big Thank You to GaeasSon for supplying the Space Frame and the awesome idea for internal turrets posted here.
I was able to make a quarter sphere shaped turret that fit inside the saucer section. Unfortunately the space required in the ship is a bit more than 4x the size of the turret, but as a result I have an internal turret that has a 45X90 degree of movement. And the ship can fit about 11 on the top part of the saucer section alone. I still need to see how many I can fit on the bottom. On a side note, if the turret were mounted on a flat part of the ship, it would have 360X90 degrees of movement. Pretty awesome for an internal turret.



Turret stats:
70470 DPS, Beam/Cannon/Over Drive, 2347/2349/2349
total size: 7047 weapon blocks, mass: 705
Radius of turret = 24 blocks

I thought I would share just in-case anybody else could use the 1/4 sphere internal turret idea

Link to ship at it's current state

 

[hzzzln]

Wow, that IS a good idea. Can we get some pictors of the phasors in action?

 

[virtue1987]

Pretty awesome. So we dont need mass enhancers on the turret base anymore, if so, then yay.
Btw, i hope you plan on having a lot of power regen or docked reactors on your ship, because those turrest will suck up a lot power with 700k each.

 

[alterintel]

Pretty awesome. So we dont need mass enhancers on the turret base anymore, if so, then yay.
Btw, i hope you plan on having a lot of power regen or docked reactors on your ship, because those turrest will suck up a lot power with 700k each.

that plus the Over Drive is putting each one at 1.5 mil/sec
This is going to be the next hurdle. I've got some ideas for docked reactors that I'm going to try out.
I don't keep secrets, so if I figure out cool way of doing it I'll share with everybody.

 

[Reilly Reese]

The Bobby will be the first thing that goes on your turret thus instantly killing it.

 

[hzzzln]

The Bobby will be the first thing that goes on your turret thus instantly killing it.

I think this is a fair trade-off regarding the small size of the turret. And you can still add some shields to the internal part of the turret. Also, it looks rad.

 

[alterintel]

any body have any ideas on how to go about keeping the turrets from getting stuck?

Every time they start tracking they end up getting stuck, I have to go into Rail Entities to reset them

 

[alterintel]

Update on Internal Turret progress:
I've made a new turret with allot of improvements:
1) Instead of the turret only being the size of a 1/8 sphere, now it's a 1/4 sphere. potentially doubling it's size
Also the empty space needed inside the ship is half what it was before.

2) It now has 360x90 degrees of movement. The same as the most common turret.

Currently the moving part of the turret has a mass of 903.75, so it's definitely going to need some mass enhancers.
The turret has 9000 weapon blocks, 3000/3000/3000, Beam/Cannon/OverDrive. This may prove to be difficult to sustain.
DPS:270K, e/sec: 4.5 mil. I may have to get rid of the overdrive?
Dimensions: X/Y/Z, 51/29/51 (prime for inserting into my enterprise)

Current issues:
Mass enhancers don't seem to be working. I did my calculations, and if I don't count for the 50 mass of "freemass", and each mass enhancer supports 5 mass, then I should need roughly 181 mass enhancers to allow for full mobility. But the turret still moves as slow a molasses on a winter's day. To verify that it was a mass enhancer problem, and not just because it's a big turret, I changed the "freemass" amount from 50 to 1000 in the config file. This is when the turret came alive. Hopefully the mass enhancer problem will be corrected soon.

 

[jayman38]

I imagine you'll probably need to replace that overdrive with explosive or something like that, if you intend to have more than, say, one turret.

 

[alterintel]

Update:

The turret has 9000 weapon blocks, 3000/3000/3000, Beam/Cannon/OverDrive. This may prove to be difficult to sustain.
DPS:270K, e/sec: 4.5 mil. I may have to get rid of the overdrive?

In reality it's drawing about 9.5 mil/sec

Current issues:
Mass enhancers don't seem to be working properly... I'm going to try to put the mass enhancers directly on the turret base and see if that has an effect.

I put the mass enhancers directly on the turret base and this resolved the issues.

I also want to try an "inverse" or chained docked reactor to power the turret. Since power sharing works with docked entities, I'm going to make a couple of docked reactors without the power supply beams. Then I'll try chain docking them and putting the turret at the end of the chain dock. Though this wont supply any energy to the mother ship, it should be able to power the turret

I'm calling them chain reactors, and they "kind of" work.
While the turret can't access the e/sec of the reactor, it can access the power storage. So I made about 20 modular reactors that generate and store about 500K each. I then docked them to each other. At the end of the chain I put down my 9.5 mil e/sec turret.

I also had to modify my turret so that it had a 50% duty cycle (1 sec on, 1 sec off) to give the tank system enough time to recharge.

It works like a champ. Now I just have to figure out where I'm going to stash 288 (250x190) reactors. That's how many it will take to independently power 12 x 270K DPS phasor turrets

This is going to be soo cool

 

[Relcodem]

Oh my, actual powerful phaser bank turrets?
18k a tick!?

Mmmmm

I need to relish this.

 

[alterintel]

Just a quick update:
I'm about a third of the way done installing the Phasor reactors. Currently have 22 chained reactors linked. I'm up to about 48 mil, only another 92 mil to go. This will be 140 mil, enough to power half of the turrets that I'll be installing. The current plan is to mount 6 turrets on the bottom of the saucer section, and 4 turrets on the top. The effect of this arrangement will be that half of the turrets will have a view of any target I select. With the turret AI's set to target selected. this will allow full time firing of turrets that have a view of the target.

Each chained reactor has 594 power blocks, and 511 power bank blocks.

 

[alterintel]

Update:
So I finished installing the "Phasor Banks" a total of 66 747640 e/sec chained reactors.
I installed 6 phasors on the top of the saucer section, and 4 on the bottom.
Then I took it out for a test spin. The results were promising. However the Beams performed exactly as expected and missed 75% of the time.
I'm going to try with cannons and see how that goes.

Here's a pic of the completed phasor banks


Phasor Testing

 

[Yrjosmiel]

Update:
So I finished installing the "Phasor Banks" a total of 66 747640 e/sec chained reactors.
I installed 6 phasors on the top of the saucer section, and 4 on the bottom.
Then I took it out for a test spin. The results were promising. However the Beams performed exactly as expected and missed 75% of the time.
I'm going to try with cannons and see how that goes.

Here's a pic of the completed phasor banks
View attachment 18069

Phasor Testing
View attachment 18070 View attachment 18071

The power reactor system could have some improvement.

 

[alterintel]

The power reactor system could have some improvement.

Would you care to elaborate? What did you have in mind? I am always open to ideas

 

[Yrjosmiel]

Would you care to elaborate? What did you have in mind? I am always open to ideas

I'd like to have a photo of your power systems. Perhaps a top-down view. I may not be looking at it right.

 

[alterintel]

Seem to be haveing issues deleting turrets to make any more changes. I've submitted a bug report. But if you guys want to have a look I've posted a link to the Ship in it's current state here